Externalism and Self-Knowledge

Externalism in the philosophy of mind contends that mental content is partly determined by the environment. The view has garnered attention since it denies the traditional assumption, associated with Descartes, that mental content is fixed independently of the external world. Apparently influenced by this assumption, Descartes also believed he could know the content of his thoughts1 while suspending all judgment about his surroundings. (Indeed, such knowledge was thought indubitable.) Yet if externalism is correct, this may well be a mistake. For as we shall see, externalism can suggest that Descartes cannot know that his own thought represents, say, elm trees (vs. beech trees) without knowing that it is elms (and not beeches) that the thought is connected to in the world. But if such worldly knowledge is a prerequisite, then Descartes could not know the content of his thought just from the armchair, so to speak. Hence there seems to be a conflict between externalism and such armchair knowledge of ones own mental contents (for short: armchair self-knowledge). Whether this conflict is real is what drives the contemporary debate on externalism and self-knowledge. Officially, we can put the issue in terms of an apparent tension between the following: EXT: Mental content is determined partly by the environment.2 SK: A subject can know from the armchair what content her thoughts have.3 In brief, the issue is that EXT may imply that knowing about content requires knowing about the environment. And since the latter is empirical, so too would be the former, contra SK.4 Now it is usually thought that, if EXT is incompatible with SK, this would be a serious problem for EXT (though some hold that internalism also conflicts with SK; see McLaughlin & Tye 1998a, Farkas 2003, Bar-On 2006, p. 434). On the other hand, some think the incompatibility threatens SK rather than EXT (see section 2.4). Regardless, the interest in the debate goes beyond EXT. For it pertains to many central concerns of philosophers, such as the nature of knowledge, and the relation between mind and world.

The debate also touches on more specialized topics, including memory, concept acquisition, epistemic responsibility, and transcendental arguments. In the standard terminology, the dispute is between incompatibilists, who hold that the conflict between EXT and SK is real, and compatibilists who deny this. Incompatibilists have developed the conflict mainly in two ways. The first way, discussed in section 2, is by a reductio ad absurdum: Incompatibilists argue that EXT plus SK entail the absurdity that one can know just from the armchair contingent facts about the external world. The second way, discussed in section 3, rests on a thought experiment about slow switching between two environments. Incompatibilists argue that such thought experiments show that EXT precludes SK. We shall also note some lesser-known issues for externalist selfknowledge, in section 4.

1. Why Externalism? 2. The Reductio to Armchair Knowledge of the External World

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2.1 Reply 1: Environmental Implications are Empirical 2.2 Reply 2: Externalism about Empty Concepts 2.3 Reply 3: Transmission Failure 2.4 Reply 4: Self-Knowledge is Empirical 2.5 Reply 5: A Transcendental Argument?

3. Slow Switching Arguments

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3.1 Reply 1: Self-Verifying Judgments 3.1.1 Counter-Replies: Knowing Too Well and Not Well Enough 3.1.2 A Problem with Critical Reasoning

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3.2 Reply 2: Relevant Alternatives 3.3 Reply 3: Externalism about Memory 3.4 Reply 4: The Argument is Self-Undermining 3.5 Reply 5: Anti-Recognitionalism

4. Other Issues with Externalist Self-Knowledge Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources

Related Entries

1. Why Externalism?
Given the tension with SK, why should we accept EXT in the first place? One reason is that EXT is more or less entailed by many contemporary theories of content. For instance, several theories say (in short) that a concept5 has its content in virtue of certain causal relations the concept bears to an environmental referent (Dretske 1981, Millikan 1984; 1989, Fodor 1987; 1990; also, cf. Kripke 1972 and Evans 1982, ch. 6). Others see mental content as posited when interpreting a subject vis--vis objects in her environment (Davidson 1973; 1987, Dennett 1975). Still others see content as determined by the inferences that feature the relevant concept; these inferential patterns, moreover, are often identifiable by the external objects that prompt entering and exiting the language (Sellars 1969). Predictably, however, such theories face various difficultiesso none provide a decisive case for EXT. Yet the foremost arguments for the view are not so parochial. These arguments instead rest on various thought experiments, purporting to show that internally identical subjects can host different thought contents, solely because of environmental differences (Putnam 1973; 1975, McGinn 1977, Stich 1978, Burge 1979; 1982; 1986). If the thought experiments are right about this, it means that internal states do not wholly determine thought content. The environment would play a part as well. The most famous experiment imagines a remote planet called Twin Earth, a planet which is superficially indiscernible from Earth (so that even its events parallel those on Earth). But there is one key difference: The compound H2O occurs nowhere on Twin Earth. In its place is a different compound that looks, tastes, etc., exactly the same, which we may call XYZ. Let us then consider Oscar, a normal adult English speaker, along with his Twin Earth doppelgnger, Twin Oscar. (Ignore that people are mostly H2O; thats an accident of the example.) The externalist intuition is that, even if

these twins are unschooled in chemistry, Oscar uses water to refer to H2O yet Twin Oscar uses water to refer to XYZ. After all, when Oscar asserts water is scrumptious, this is directed at water, yet Twin Oscars parallel assertion is in reference to XYZ, a.k.a. twin water.6 Moreover, suppose we accept the Fregean view that the meaning of a term determines what the term refers to (or in Carnaps words, that intension determines extension).7 Then, given the different referents, the twins terms must have different meanings as well. But Oscar and Twin Oscar are physical duplicates; so this reveals that the meaning of water is not wholly fixed by speakers internal states. Rather, the environment also figures into it.8 This claim about linguistic meaning is then extended to the content (McGinn, Stich, op. cits.) of mental representations for natural kinds like water, as well as for nonnatural kinds like sofas (where the latter kinds are defined by social convention) (Burge, op. cits.). Consider here that when Oscar says sofas are delightful, he expresses a thought about sofas. Suppose, moreover, that Twin Oscars community defines a sofa slightly differently, so that broad, overstuffed armchairs count as sofas. Consequently, when Twin Oscar asserts sofas are delightful, he differs from Oscar in expressing a thought that references (among other things) broad, overstuffed armchairs. But again, if content determines reference, the difference in reference demonstrates a difference in intension or content.9 Thus we arrive at EXT. Some might find these science fiction stories extravagant, and it may be unclear how they can teach us anything about the real world. Yet there are actual examples which also illustrate the point (Ludlow 1995b; see also Butler 1997, Tye 1998).10 Consider that chicory and endive have their denotations switched between Standard American English and British English. The two types of salad green also seem identical to the untrained eye (or palate, as it were). Thus a Brit and an American, both untrained, might be internally the same in all relevant respects, yet refer to different greens when asserting chicory is scrumptious. So chicory will express a concept with different content, despite the subjects being internally alike. (Notably, water itself might vary in content

among different locations in actual world. For what flows from taps contains different admixtures in different municipalities. Cf. Malt 1994.) Nevertheless, philosophers have rejected these arguments on a variety of grounds (Mellor 1977, Searle 1983, ch. 8, Bach 1988; 1998, Crane 1991, Rosenberg 1994, Chomsky 1995; 2000, Siewart 1998, Segal 2000, Horgan & Tienson 2002, Farkas 2008, Adams & Aizawa, forthcoming). Other philosophers do not reject EXT as much as restrict it: These philosophers posit a kind of contentso called narrow contentwhich is determined independently of the environment. (Block 1986, Loar 1988, Chalmers 1996; 2002, Jackson 1998, Georgalis 1994; 1999, Wikforss 2007, Mendola 2008. See also the entry on Narrow Content.) For instance, Two Dimensionalists characterize narrow content as a function that takes an environment as input and outputs the wide content of the concept in that environment, i.e., the content of which EXT is true (Chalmers op. cits.). And putatively, the problem with armchair self-knowledge does not arise. (For more, see Fernandez 2004 as well as the entry on Two Dimensional Semantics.) The debate on whether EXT is unrestrictedly true is important, yet this is not the place to discuss it. (But see the entry on Externalism about Mental Content.) For our purposes, the main point is that EXT is not without support, and so there is some reason to hold onto the view despite the apparent tension with SK.

2. The Reductio to Armchair Knowledge of the External World

But is the tension real? One argument on the pro side is a reductio ad absurdum: The thrust is that EXT and SK jointly entail an obvious falsehood, namely, that Oscar can know from the armchair contingent facts about the external world (McKinsey 1991; 1994; 2002; 2007, Brown 1995, Boghossian 1997; 1998). If so, then EXT and SK cannot be jointly true, and the incompatibilist wins the debate. The argument here is as follows: Assume EXT and SK for reductio, and let E name the Environmental condition that EXT requires for a concept to have a water content

(versus a twin content).11 Apparently, EXT and SK then imply that Oscar can know from the armchairor in the incompatibilists idiom, know aprioriboth of the following: (1) If Oscar is thinking that water is wet, then E obtains. (2) Oscar is thinking that water is wet. Here, let us say p is known apriori (or just: p is apriori) iff p is known without a concerted empirical investigation of the external world. (Note that introspective knowledge counts as apriori in this context, even though it arises from a kind of introspective experience. See Miller 1997, Davies 1998, Nuccetelli 1999, and McLaughlin 2000; 2003 for more on the present conception of the apriori). Now on the current line, (1) can be known apriori if EXT is true (though as we shall see, there are different ways to spin this). Whereas, (2) is apriori given SK. Yet if Oscar has apriori knowledge of both (1) and (2), Oscar can then use modus ponens to know apriori that: (3) E obtains. But E is an environmental condition that presumably can only be known empirically. So EXT and SK apparently lead to an absurd sort of apriori knowledge, and are thus incompatible. (Henceforth, let us call this argument the reductio.) Before we consider the compatibilists replies, one clarification of the reductio is in order. For it may be unclear whether EXT entails (1) in the first place (whether apriori or not). Yet if EXT is derived from one of the causal theories of content (from section 1), then acquiring the water concept requires causally interacting with water (if only via your linguistic community). (McGinn 1989, ch. 1 passim, McCullough 1999. But see Ball 2007.) At the least, the existence of water is required, meaning that the view entails (1). Even so, if the incompatibilist wants to add that (1) is entailed apriori, she would need the dubious premise that some causal theory of content is entirely apriori. So on a charitable reading, the incompatibilists reductio does not target an externalism based on a causal theory. It is rather directed at a view based solely on the Twin Earth thought experiments, since the experiments are more naturally seen as apriori. (But see

Baker 2007.) For the remainder of section 2, then, externalism and EXT shall refer exclusively to this kind of Twin Earth based externalism.

2.1 Reply 1: Environmental Implications are Empirical

Yet it may remain unclear whether EXT is committed to (1). For the thought experiments alone do not assume that water is necessary for water thoughts (Brueckner 1992). True, the thought experiments suppose that suitable interaction with water is sufficient for Oscar to have water thoughts. They also assume that Twin Oscars interactions with XYZ are insufficient. But this does not yet imply that interacting with water is the only way that someone can arrive at water thoughts. However, this assumes that E is a condition where water exists (or at least existed at one time). Yet the incompatibilists reductio need not assume that (McKinsey 1994; 2002; 2007). On this tack, one can first see the incompatibilist as presenting a dilemma, corresponding to two ways that EXT might be interpreted. According to the first reading, EXT holds that a water thought logically or conceptually implies some environmental condition E. Yet for the incompatibilist, logical or conceptual implications are apriori. So if EXT on this first reading is true, (1) is apriori (and nothing here prejudges what E is).12 Even so, the first reading is not the usual interpretation of EXT. On a more standard construal, EXT holds that a water thought metaphysically implies some environmental condition E. Yet metaphysical implications, e.g., that water is wet implies H2O is wet, are not always apriori. (See Kripke 1972 and the entry on Rigid Designators). So the apriority of (1) is not guaranteed by the second reading, and the reductio seems in doubt. Yet incompatibilists reply that the second reading cannot be what the externalist really intends. For it renders EXT into something trivialafter all, it is obvious that Oscars water thoughts metaphysically imply a number of external conditions, e.g., that Oscar was born (McKinsey, op. cits.). But of course, for the compatibilist, EXT is more substantive than that. For the thought experiments suggest that a water thought metaphysically implies some content specific environmental condition, such as the existence of water (Brueckner 1995).

Regardless, a different version of the reductio avoids this controversy altogether. Here, EXT suggests that a water thought metaphysically implies E, yet it is consistently assumed throughout that: (4) E = Water or a community using the water concept exists(/existed) (Brown 1995, Boghossian 1997). Crucially, this identifies E as a non-trivial, content specific condition. Yet even though this makes EXT non-trivial, the incompatibilist still thinks that the thought experiments reveal (1) apriori [where E is identified at (4)]. Thus, the reductio draws out that the externalist apparently can know apriori that either water or a community exists (or once existed). Nevertheless, the compatibilist will ask anew: Why think that EXT is committed to (1) or to its apriori status? Granted, many externalists find it apriori plausible that, besides interacting with water, Oscar could acquire the water concept from other community members. Yet some externalists have conjectured that in a waterless world, Oscar can arrive at the water concept all by himself, just by hypothesizing the H2O molecule (Burge 1982). So EXT does not seem strictly committed to (1). But incompatibilists have replied that (ironically) these very reflections indicate apriori something that should not be apriori (Brown, Boghossian, op. cits.). Namely: If Oscar has no such hypotheses (i.e., if he is agnostic about chemical essences), then (1) must be true. In more detail, if Oscar is agnostic about chemistry and knows that apriori about himself, he can use the above reflections to know apriori that his water thoughts metaphysically imply the existence of water or a community. From there, apriori knowledge of E seems eminent. Even so, the compatibilists opening objection lingers: Nothing yet shows that the only ways to acquire water thoughts, under EXT, are in the ways catalogued so far (Ball 2007). So for all Oscar can know apriori, he may be socially isolated and his water thoughts may reference no natural kind. (See also Gallois & Hawthorne 1996, Gallois 2008, McLaughlin & Tye 1998a; 1998b; 1998c).

But perhaps additional apriori considerations can rule this out. In particular, Oscar might reflect on what EXT implies about non-natural kind thoughts (Brown op. cit.). Suppose, for instance, that Oscar has the concept of a sofa and knowledgeably applies the concept in a variety of instances. Yet assume he is agnostic on whether the concept applies to broad overstuffed armchairs. Then, if Oscar has no community to decide the matter for him, EXT may suggest that Oscars concept is indeterminate in what it refers to. And that seems rather odd. However, the compatibilist may ask why this is supposed to be a problem (McLaughlin & Tye, op. cits.). For the indeterminacy may show only that Oscars concept is vague and not that Oscar fails to possess any concept whatsoever. (Brown 2001 replies by defining agnostic so it applies only if the concept is non-vague. Yet Brown 2004, ch. 8 admirably concedes that Oscar can then no longer know apriori if he is agnostic.) So, again, it seems that EXT will not reveal apriori that water thoughts metaphysically imply some content specific environmental condition.

2.2 Reply 2: Externalism about Empty Concepts

Nevertheless, it may remain intuitively compelling that a Twin Earth thought experiment, if cogent, entails (1) apriori, where E is the condition that water exists13 (if Oscar is agnostic about chemical essences). For it seems that the experiments reveal apriori that the water concept is non-empty, i.e., that its referent exists. However, a compatibilist can counter this by offering an account of empty concepts that is consonant with EXT (Stoneham 1999, Sawyer 2003, Goldberg 2006b, Haukioja 2006, Parent MSa. See also Pryor 2007, pp. 184-185). Even so, there are two arguments in the literature suggesting that any externalist view of empty concepts must fail (Boghossian 1997; 1998, Segal 2000). On its face, empty-concept externalism can be supported by a Twin Earth thought experiment (Boghossian op. cits.).14 Consider Dry Eartha planet exactly like ours, except wherever water occurs on Earth, there are only watery looking holograms (though Dry Earthians mistake these for a real kind). The intuition is then that Dry Oscar uses

water to express an empty concept, unlike Oscar. But if Dry Oscar is not referring to water, then as before, the Frege-Carnap view implies that his concept has a different intension or content. So even for empty concepts, it would seem that content is determined partly by facts about the environment (including facts about what is absent from the environment). However, carrying this further may lead to absurdity, since externalism about empty concepts can suggest that a concepts form is sensitive to the environment as well (ibid). Suppose first, as is plausible, that empty concepts have a descriptive formso that (e.g.) the unicorn concept is understood as the concept horse with a horn. For most externalists, this contrasts with our concept of water which does not have a descriptive form, but is rather atomic. Yet if so, this means that Dry Oscar expresses a descriptive concept when using water, whereas Oscar expresses an atomic one. In which case, the environmental difference creates a difference in form as well as content. But that seems odd, since form seems to be a purely syntactic matter, fixed entirely by whats in the head. At least one compatibilist has tried embracing environment-dependent syntax, though concedes it is an uncomfortable view (Ludlow 2003; 2011). Others question the supervenience principle in the argument, viz., that a difference in form necessitates a difference in internal state (Corb 1998, Brown 1999, Korman 2006). Further argument has been offered for this principle (Boghossian 1998), yet such arguments may beg the question in presupposing a Chomskian, internalist notion of logical form (Parent MSa). However this issue unfolds, externalism about empty concepts faces a further challenge (Segal 2000, pp. 54-56). Consider: Either the externalist sees the unicorn-concept as necessarily empty or not.15 If the former, then the view implies that unicorns are impossible objects, like round squares. And that is rather counterintuitive (yet see Kripke 1972 on unicorns). But taking the other horn (sorry), a contingently empty concept would have its content fixed by descriptors like horse with a horn. In this case, EXT seems false. For the constancy of the descriptors guarantees that the concept has the same

content in every possible world, whether or not it contains unicorns. (Yet for replies, see Korman op. cit., Parent MSa, n. 11.)

2.3 Reply 3: Transmission Failure

If externalism about empty concepts fails, then EXT may well entail (1) apriori, per the incompatibilists reductio. But a compatibilist may try a different line of resistance. She might simply grant that (1) and (2) are apriori, but still somehow block apriori knowledge of (3). (For simplicity, we will focus on (3), though similar points apply to putative apriori knowledge that either water or a community exists.) The most prominent strategy of this type is to deny the transmission of warrant that supposedly occurs in the deduction of (3) from (1) and (2) (hereafter, the deduction). The claim is that, even if the externalist agrees that (1) and (2) are warranted, none of this warrant transmits to (3) in the deduction (Davies 1998; 2000; 2003a; 2003b, Wright 2000a; 2000b; 2003; 2011; see also Wright 1985). If so, the deduction cannot furnish apriori knowledge of (3), pace the incompatibilist. For brevity, let us call the advocate of transmission failure the advocate. Then, the advocates core idea is that even though (1) and (2) entail (3), they cannot be used to prove (3). For in brief, the proof seems question begging (Davies, Wright, op. cits.; also see McLaughlin 2000). Question begging, however, may not be the right word here (cf. Beebee 2001, Prichard 2002, Silins 2011). Still, the idea is that (3) in some sense is presupposed in the context of the reductio, once the deduction gets started. And if such circularity is operative, the deduction cannot create any warrant for (3), much less prove it. Or in the advocates idiom, the warrant for (1) and (2) does not transmit to (3) in virtue of the deduction. As a satisficing approximation,16 the transmission of warrant generally occurs iff: (TW) If a subject S is warranted in believing p and is warranted in believing that p entails q (and S further recognizes that q follows deductively from these beliefs)then S acquires, potentially for the first time, warrant in believing q. (Cf. Wright 2000a, p. 140-141.)

But to avoid confusion, (TW) should be distinguished from epistemic closure, as discussed by some anti-skeptics (e.g., Dretske 1970). Some compatibilists argue that the reductio indeed exemplifies a failure of epistemic closure (see Bernecker 2000, Hale 2000, Sawyer 2006). Yet transmission failure is a different affair, most obviously since epistemic closure addresses knowledge rather than warrant. But warrant transmission differs even from the closure of warrant, characterized as follows: (CW) If S is warranted in believing p and warranted in believing that p entails q, then S is warranted in believing q (or is able to be thus warranted). The difference between transmission and warrant closure is best seen in cases of question begging. Take an overtly circular argument which concludes (3) using (3) as a premise. Trivially, anyone warranted in believing the premise is warranted in believing the conclusion. So (CW) is satisfied in this case. But the argument does not transmit warrant to its conclusion, since it cannot bestow any warrant for (3) that was not already there. Or from a different angle, a person cannot use the argument to gain knowledge of (3) for the very first time. Hence, warrant fails to transmit onto the conclusion, even though warrant closure holds trivially. The advocate thus cries transmission failure in relation to (1)-(3), on the grounds that (3) is presupposed. Yet in this instance, the presupposition charge is not as straightforward. For claritys sake, let us call (1) and (2) the *premises of the deduction, to contrast them with the premises of the reductio. (The latter are stronger in claiming that the former are true apriori.) Then, the advocate bases the presupposition charge on the following: An externalist can rationally grant that the *premises are warranted only if she has certain background assumptions which already imply (3). The point is also put in terms of a certain information dependence: An externalist who grants warrant to the *premises rationally requires certain collateral information, including (3) (Wright 2000a, p. 149). In this way, an externalists acceptance of those [background] assumptions cannot be rationally combined with doubt about the truth of [(3)] (Davies 2003a, p. 43, but contrast Davies 2000, p. 402).

For simplicity (since rational externalists are the only ones we care about), assume henceforth that the externalist is rational. Then, the force of the presupposition charge is most readily felt via the following approximation:17 In considering the reductio, B(3) An externalist grants that the *premises are warranted only if (3) is already among her Background assumptions. Note: B(3) is a second order thesis about the dialectics of the reductio; the antecedent is a condition where the externalist grants that the *premises are warranted (regardless of whether they are warranted). Thus B(3)says that the externalist will be presuming (3), if she concedes warrant to the *premises in the first place. It is in this way that (3) is presupposed once the deduction is mobilized, thus resulting in transmission failure. An argument for B(3) has yet to be given, but there are two on offer. The first starts with the remark that, since EXT requires water for thinking water is wet (as all parties are currently allowing), the same is true of the self-attributing thought Im thinking that water is wet. (Davies op. cits). However, if this along with (2) is seen as warranted then (3) cannot rationally be put in doubt. For if the existence of water were in doubt, then this forces a further doubt on whether the thought expressed by (2), I am thinking that water is wet, exists in the first place. But the existence of the thought must be allowed before one can concede a warrant to it. Consequently, our externalist will allow a warrant to both *premises only if (3) is already part of the background, which is just what B(3) says. The second argument we might attribute to a character called Wrightgenstein or just W. for short, since it originates in Crispin Wrights interpretive work on Wittgenstein. (For more on W., see section 3.5.) As an externalist, W. first acknowledges the possibility of error in discerning ones own mental contents, as when Dry Oscar misjudges his empty concept to have a natural kind content. But having noted that, he sees no reason to surrender the warrant possessed by ordinary judgments about content. This parallels a natural view of perceptual judgment: Even though perceptual illusions occur, ordinarily we still possess warrant for our perceptual judgments about the world. In both cases, W. thinks this is because our ordinary perceptual and self-attributing judgments enjoy a kind

of default warrant. Such warrant discounts the possibility of illusion, even when one has gathered no supporting empirical evidence. Though naturally, if a reasonable suspicion arises, the default no longer applies. But ordinarily our judgments are presumed innocent of error until proven (or at least evidenced to be) guilty; this in turn is rooted in our communal practices, and is justified on pragmatic grounds (ibid., p. 152153). All this is important for B(3), since if W. grants (2) a warrant in the absence of empirical investigation, it will be a default warrant (at least in part). And this kind of warrant exists only in ordinary cases. Thus, he grants this warrant only if he assumes that there is no Dry Earth illusion where (3) merely appears to be true. So in particular, in the context of the reductio, W. will allow an apriori warrant to the *premises only if (3) is already assumed as background. QED Let us now consider some objections to transmission failure. One is that the whole topic is a red herringfor (TW) may be unnecessary to convict compatibilists of objectionable apriori knowledge (McKinsey 2003). In its place, an incompatibilist might just appeal to the closure of apriority understood as follows: (CAP) If S is apriori warranted in believing p and p entails q, then S is also apriori warranted in believing q (or at least is able to be thus warranted). Yet an advocate may reply that it is of no great importance if such closure holds (Wright 2003, though Wright 2011 prefers to just deny (CAP).) For as we saw in the case of (CW), the closure of warrant does not imply that the deduction created the warrant for (3)and that remains true even if the warrants are apriori. (Indeed, W. ordinarily posits a non-empirical warrant for (3), independently of any deductions.) However, the threat all along was not that (3) has warrant, but rather that the deduction may create a new warrant for (3), entirely apriori. For that to follow, the incompatibilist must add that a new warrant transmits onto (3). Yet that is precisely what the advocate denies. A different objection accuses the advocate of confusing different types of warrant (Raffman 1998, Sainsbury 2000). Note first that, if the deduction fails to prove the

conclusion, this does not mean it transmits no warrant at all. (Beebee 2001, Burge 2003). The objector accordingly proposes that the deduction transmits a thinner warrant to (3). The only reason transmission seems to fail, on this view, is that the thinner warrant is conflated with something thicker. And indeed, the assumption has been that if the deduction transmits any warrant, then the warrant transmitted suffices for a proof of (3). But for the objector, that we should not expect the transmission of a warrant that thick. Still, an advocate might concede the transmission of a thinner warrant, but still emphasize that transmission failure is the rule when the warrants are thick (Davies 2003b, but compare Wright 2003, p. 72). On the other hand, an advocate could take a stronger stance by doubting the existence of any thinner transmitted warrant. After all, such a warrant seems to dissipate immediately once any earnest doubt is raised (Wright 2000b, yet contrast with Wright 2003; 2011). Be that as it may, the advocate allows the rough distinction between thin and thick warrants, and may even use it to avoid other difficulties. For instance, an objector might think that the advocate surrenders SK after all, since (3) is empirical and it is allowed that (2) presupposes (3) (cf. Wright 2000, p. 151-152). But for W. at least, (3) ordinarily has a non-empirical default warrant, and that makes possible an apriori warrant for (2). Yet W. is quick to note that this warrant is too thin to prove (3). Even so, what exactly does the thinness consist in? Some advocates unpack this as the warrant failing as a warrant for equivalent propositions. For instance, a non-empirical warrant for (2) may fail to warrant the equivalent I am thinking that H2O is wet (Davies 2003b, p. 114 and 118). Or as an alternate construal, the thinness for W. may reflect that the warrant is not something earned by gathering empirical or proof-theoretic evidence. Rather, it is just a defeasible entitlement that holds only in the ordinary cases (Wright 2003). As a related objection, some propose that if the advocate grants an apriori warrant to (3), this is already to concede the reductio (Brown 2003; 2004, Sawyer 2006, Brueckner 2006). For the absurdity did not concern transmission directly; instead, the absurdity was in thinking that (3) can be apriori warranted. However, advocates can respond in two

different ways here. One is to be neutral on whether (3) is apriori, since transmission failure is still sufficiently explained by (3) being presupposed, regardless of its epistemic basis (Davies 2000). But such a response is not available to W., for he clearly thinks that (3) ordinarily has a non-empirical warrant. Still, perhaps W. could soften this by identifying this apriori warrant as thin, and still maintain that such thin warrant is not transmitted. However, a more recent version of the reductio seems to demonstrate that the deduction can transmit a thin warrant (Wright 2011, pp. 98-102). If so, then transmission failure fails with this version of the reductio, and a compatibilist would require some other response.

2.4 Reply 4: Self-Knowledge is Empirical

So far, the replies to the reductio have been combative in that they seek to undermine some tacit or explicit premise therein. But other responses are concessive in that they admit that the reductio has a point. One concessive response is to reject EXT in light of the reductio, though as we noted in section 1, EXT has its own arguments to contend with. But a different concession, considered in this section, is to forgo SK. (There is also a quasi-concessive response, considered in section 2.5, where the apriority of (3) is simply embraced rather than labeled as absurd.) Some incompatibilists indeed take the lesson of the reductio to be that SK is false (see, e.g., McKinsey 2002). Often, the sentiment is that SK should have been highly suspect from the start. Jacob (2004) once expressed this well as follows: One aspect of the contemporary philosophical situation is puzzling. On the one hand, few if any features of the special epistemic authority granted by both the traditional empiricist and the traditional rationalist pictures of introspective selfknowledge have survived recent philosophical scrutiny. On the other hand, several philosophersassume that the alleged special epistemic authority granted to introspective self-knowledge by traditional epistemology can bear the burden of an argument against content externalismI take externalism about the contents of an individuals thoughtsto be more plausiblethan anything we may think

about introspective self-knowledgeImposing top down constraints on the contentsfrom the assumptions about the alleged epistemic status of introspective self-knowledge sounds to me like putting the cart before the horse. (pp. 401, 402) Yet however compelling this may sound, one still might like some independent reason to surrender SK, instead of choosing one of the other replies to the reductio. There are of course Quinean reasons against apriori knowledge, though this is not the place to discuss these. (But see section 3 of the entry on Quine.) Ryle 1963, ch. 6 also denied that self-knowledge is apriori; such knowledge was instead achieved via empirical observation of ones own behavior. Yet most contemporary philosophers balk at this, since it seems to underestimate the authority that Oscar usually has in judging his own mental states (compared to others judgments) (Boghossian 1989, pp. 7-8). Even so, empirical psychology has indicated that first-person authority is illusory to a notable degree (Nisbett & Wilson 1977, Nisbett & Ross 1980, Gopnik 1983. See also McGeer 1996). So a neo-Rylean view may provide just the right amount of first-person authority, to the extent that Oscar observes more of his behavior than anyone else (Ludlow & Martin 1993; Martin 1994; McGeer op. cit.). There is a more recent incarnation of this sort of view, supported by the latest from cognitive science (Carruthers 2011). Here, the idea is that one interprets sensory input when attributing thoughts to oneself, just as when attributing thoughts to others. However, the sensory input for self-attributions can include input from interoception, proprioception, and the like. Nevertheless, the view maintains that interpretation of input is central in both first-person and third-person attributions of thought, which cuts into so called first-person authority. A rather different line against SK derives from an externalist view about concept possession. This view hypothesizes that possession of a (non-empty) kind concept requires the ability to ostend or demonstratively identify instances of the kind by perceptual means (Brewer 1999; 2000a; 2000b). If so, then to possess the water concept

is already to know perceptually where (instances of) the stuff resides. That in turn suffices for knowing that water exists (ceteris paribus). So when it comes to the reductio, the absurdity stems from thinking that (2) is apriori, since knowledge of (2) already rests on knowledge of (3). Accordingly, one can hardly learn (3) for the first time via knowledge of (2). The learning proceeds in the other direction. In the acquisition process, however, the role of demonstrative identification may be unclear. Nevertheless, a similar argument against SK can be formulated as long as some kind of empirical knowledge is needed to acquire the water concept. Indeed, it is typically assumed that a person acquires a concept from experiencewhich already portends that acquisition depends on empirical knowledge. Yet if thats right, then even knowledge of (2) has an empirical basis, since possession of the water concept does. Hence, knowledge of (2) does not qualify as purely apriori. In response, one may concede that there is a training period for acquiring a concept. Still, apriori knowledge might be distinctive in that, once the subject has acquired the relevant concepts, she can use them to gain new knowledge without further empirical inquiry (Boghossian & Peacocke 2000, p. 2). But as a rejoinder, EXT usually portrays concept possession in a way that blurs the distinction between the training phase and the post-acquisition phase (Hawthorne 2007, p. 213). For the externalist thought experiments allow a subject to possess (e.g.) the sofa concept even prior to being trained that no armchair is a sofa.18 A final doubt about SK is that, if (1) is not apriori (as is plausible), it follows that apriori knowledge of (2) is impossible (Gertler 2004). After all, if (1) is not apriori, then Oscar apparently cannot discriminate apriori between his water concept and the Dry Earthian concept. So it seems incorrect to say that (2) is something known. Now in fact, this raises the extremely important question of whether such discriminations are necessary for selfknowledge, but further discussion will be delayed until section 3. The discrimination subliterature usually addresses the slow switching arguments rather than the incompatibilists reductio.

2.5 Reply 5: A Transcendental Argument?

The last response to the reductio is to deny that the argument is a reductio at all. Instead, this compatibilist embraces that EXT and SK can facilitate armchair knowledge of the world. In fact, some externalists have offered independent arguments to that effect (Putnam 1981). But these independent arguments are significantly more complex, having to do with model theory and Skolems paradox. Such things shall not be discussed here (but see the entry on Skepticism and Content Externalism). Yet as concerns the incompatibilists reductio, it is unclear whether any actual externalist accepts it as an anti-skeptical argument (though see Peacocke 1996, p. 152). After all, even if one holds that some transcendental argument can succeed against skepticism, it is hard to think that the incompatibilists reductio is a case in point (cf. Davies 1998, p. 353). Be that as it may, Warfield (1998) and Sawyer (1998) are often read as embracing the reductio as an anti-skeptical argument. But the fact is that Warfield is not addressing the reductio; he is instead mostly concerned with Putnams (1981) argument. (Warfield mentions the reductio in passing, but he explicitly endorses Brueckners 1992 compatibilist reply in section 2.1, over a transcendentalist response.) Sawyer, moreover, clearly discourages those who interpret her (1998) as embracing the reductio as an anti-skeptical argument: Remarks by others indicate that in general the question of whether externalist arguments yield apriori warrants for beliefs about environmental conditions is seen as synonymous with the question whether we have an apriori refutation of external world skepticism. I do not see the questions as synonymous (2006, p. 150). Instead, Sawyers view seems similar to that of W., where speakers are given a prima facie (albeit quite defeasible) warrant when ascribing their own mental contents. True, Sawyer allows that given EXT, such a warrant can be transmitted to (3).19 But it is not the kind of warrant that suffices to undermine skepticism; the warrant is rather of the thin variety, noted at the end of section 2.3. Yet though Sawyers view is not as radical as many have thought, she would face similar obstacles as W.

3. Slow Switching Arguments

We have explored one argument against the joint truth of EXT and SK, namely, the reductio to armchair knowledge of the world. But there is a further group of arguments to the same incompatibilist effect. Such arguments rest on a different thought experiment, the slow switching experiment, to bolster the intuition that EXT and SK are not jointly true. For in brief, the new thought experiment suggests that under EXT, self-attributions of thought content are not sufficiently discriminating to vindicate SK. The slow switch thought experiment again features Oscar on Earthyet this time, we suppose he is unwittingly switched to Twin Earth (e.g., during his sleep by a secret government operative) (Burge 1988, Boghossian 1989). Upon his arrival, he then takes up his usual activities, being none the wiser. Now the externalists intuition is that although Oscars use of water on Twin Earth initially refers to water on Earth, over time it comes to denote XYZ. (The switch is thus a slow one.) The eventual switch in referent seems more likely than notafter all, Oscar will acquire the habit of using water in the presence of XYZ, and of using water to converse with Twin Earthians about the stuff. Yet if water changes its referent, then (by the earlier Frege-Carnap view) this signals a shift in intension or content. And apparently, the change in content will occur without Oscar noticing. Indeed it seems Oscar cannot detect the switch just from the armchair. What this indicates is that Oscar is unable to discriminate from the armchair whether specific assertions have a water content versus a twin water content. And as with the original Twin Earth example, the lesson here is extended to mental content as well. Hence, if a water thought is one that Oscar expresses with help from the term water, the slow switch experiment indicates that: (A) Oscar cannot discriminate from the armchair that his water thought has a water content rather than a twin water content.

His inability to discriminate, moreover, seems pertinent to SK. As Burge (1988, p. 653) puts it, (A) can easily suggest that SK is false in Oscars case, i.e.: (B) Oscar cannot know from the armchair what content his water thought has. Generalizing from this, (B) suggests that SK ends up false if EXT is true. In section 3.1, we shall see that Burge denies that (A) entails (B). Yet in light of this resistance, Boghossian (1989) formulates a different version of the slow switch argument. This second version, known as the memory argument, runs as follows. As before, suppose Oscar unwittingly is subject to a slow-switch, so that the concept he expresses with water at t1 denotes water, and the concept he expresses at t2 denotes twin water. Then, if p is a thought that Oscar uses water in expressing, the argument is: (1) If Oscar forgets nothing, then what Oscar knows at t1, Oscar knows at t2. (2) Oscar forgot nothing. (3) Oscar does not know at t2 that he thinks p. (4) So, Oscar does not know at t1 that he thinks p. [from (1)-(3)] (Adapted from Ludlow 1993a.) Premise (1) is seen as a platitude about memory (though some will deny this; see section 3.3). Premise (2) is then regarded as stipulative, and premise (3) is seen as the lesson of the slow switch thought experiment. The thinking behind (3) is this: Even if Oscar knows his water thoughts at t1, yet these morph into twin water thoughts at t2, he no longer knows at t2 about any water thoughts. For Oscar no longer has water thoughts at t2 (though as we shall see, this too is a point of contention). Truth be told, there are further variations on these slow switch arguments. Whats more, there ends up being multiple interpretations of the initial thought experiment. For it is unclear what effect exactly the slow switch has on Oscars conceptual repertoire. The default stance is that the slow switch causes Oscars water concept to be wholly replaced by the twin water concept. (And unless otherwise noted, this will be the

interpretation assumed in what follows.) But it may be unclear why a slow switch destroys Oscars water concept, even as he becomes acquainted with twin water (Boghossian 1989; 1992a, Gibbons 1996, Burge 1998). Thus some have regarded differently what goes on in a slow switch; these views shall be considered toward the end of section 3.3. Nonetheless, all variations on the slow switch argument embody the same thought: If EXT is true, then in a slow switch Oscar cannot distinguish from the armchair a water content from a twin content. This then forms the basis for why EXT precludes SK. But in light of the two basic types of slow switch argument, note that sections 3.1 and 3.1.1 only addresses the first type, i.e., the inference from (A) to (B). Section 3.3, on the other hand, pertains fairly exclusively to the second type, the memory argument. The remaining sections, however, plausibly have some bearing on both types of argument.

3.1 Reply 1: Self-Verifying Judgments

As concerns the (A) to (B) maneuver, Burge protests that this glosses over an especially secure type of armchair self-knowledge. In particular, there are judgments about ones own thought contents (a.k.a., second order judgments) that are self-verifying. Roughly, these are judgments where thinking makes it sowhere judging I am now thinking that p is enough to make it true that one is now thinking that p. Importantly, however, this self-verifying feature is limited to ones occurrent thinking of p (in contrast to any standing or dispositional thoughts). To illustrate the self-verifying feature, consider the following judgment: (W) I am thinking, with this very thought, that water is wet. Burges idea is that in executing this judgment, one runs through the very thought that the judgment is about. That is, judging (W) necessitates thinking the thought that water is wetand thinking that thought is precisely what (W) contends. So the very act of judging (W) suffices to make that judgment true. It is in that sense that the judgment is self-fulfilling or self-verifying. Besides Burge, self-verifying judgments were touted

around the same time by Davidson (1987; 1988) and Heil (1988; 1992), though others have subsequently embraced them as well (e.g., Falvey and Owens 1994, Gibbons 1996, Bar-On 2004). Nevertheless, the suggestion that certain judgments are infallible can seem exceedingly strong. But for one, infallibility does not imply that the judgment is indubitable. A judgment could de facto be perfectly reliable, yet the subject might still have some unanswered questions about it. Second, it is crucial that thinking is construed minimally, in that to think that p is not necessarily to believe that p. Thinking that p just means having some mental state or other with the content pit does not come with any particular attitude toward that content. Thus, when a thought that p is selfattributed, this is neutral on whether p is believed, hoped, feared, or what have you. Still, in light of things like Freudian repression, it can be easy to dismiss Burges view. But it is important that his view applies only to a limited class of rather atypical judgments. For instance, it applies only when the second-order judgment contains a selfreferential mechanism, expressed in (W) by the phrase with this very thought.20 Moreover, the view pertains to occurrent judgments that attribute the cooccurrent first-order thought. Thus, self-verifying judgments do not imply that the firstorder thought has existed beyond the very moment it is judged. Relatedly, there is no implication that the first-order thought is the only thought that presently occupies the subject. Hence, the judgment that (W) can be true even if the subjects mind also harbors, consciously or unconsciously, a variety of other thoughts (Parent, MSb). Although self-verifying judgments are atypical, Burge still thinks they are sufficient to block the inference from (A) to (B). For apparently, they provide a kind of Cartesian knowledge of ones own thought-contentsand that means that (B) is false even if (A) is true. Granted, self-verifying judgments are a rarified kind of judgment, so Burges view is hardly satisfying as a general view of self-knowledge (Boghossian 1989, pp. 19-22). Still, the main goal was to block the inference from (A) to (B), and self-verifying judgments may do that.

3.1.1 Counter-Replies: Knowing Too Well and Not Well Enough

Predictably, Burges self-verifying judgments are not universally accepted. Indeed, some philosophers incredulously stare at the idea that mere mortals can know anything infallibly. But further substance can be given to this, e.g., by targeting Burges explanation of the infallibility. Burge holds specifically that the relevant judgments are infallible in virtue of a self-referential mechanism in the attribution (with this very thought). This mechanism is supposedly what locks the second-order judgment to the first-order thought, thus ensuring that the judgment never misses its target. Yet if the second-order judgment is self-referential, then this at best explains why the second-order judgment is locked to itself. It does not show why it is locked to the first-order thought (Parent 2007). However, this problem can be avoided if the phrase with this very thought in (W) is replaced with forthwithwhere the latter just denotes the first-order thought expressed by the complement clause of (W) (Parent MSb). For that matter, with this very thought could just be deleted. For plausibly, the second order judgment has a compositional structure such that the first order thought is literally an (ineliminable) part of the judgment. (Parent 2007; MSc). If so, then tokening the second order judgment necessitates the occurrence of the first-order thoughtjust in the way that writing I am thinking that water is wet necessitates writing down its complement clause water is wet. Since the occurrence of the first order thought is precisely what the judgment contends, the judgment is thus invariably true, i.e., infallible. Besides having us know our thoughts too well, Burge is also criticized for having us know our thoughts not well enough. For one, it has been suggested that a slow switch victim will not understand her own first-order thought well enough to count as knowing it (Cassam 1994, Wikforss 2004 is also relevant). Others have complained that, even if a self-verifying judgment is infallible, it is unclear whether it qualifies as genuine knowledge (Brueckner 1990; 1994).

On the latter issue, one might first allow that the relevant judgments are de facto infallible for the reason Burge says. Yet consider that if (W) is armchair-known, then (if knowledge is closed under known entailment), it seems one might ipso facto armchairknow that: (W*) I am not currently thinking that twin water is wet. But suppose a skeptic is raising the possibility of a slow switch, a scenario where your water thoughts have been stealthily switched to twin water thoughts. When taking this possibility seriously, it seems an externalist cannot be confident about (W*) from the armchair. Yet if she does not armchair-know this consequence of (W), then (assuming closure) she does not know (W) itself (Brueckner, op. cits., but contrast with Brueckner 2010). Burges second-order judgments hence fail as genuine knowledge, and the compatibilists case falters. The argument presses that Oscar does not know what he thinks if he cannot discriminate between water thoughts and twin water thoughts. This represents a kind of discrimination requirement on knowledge (reminiscent of Goldman 1976). And even armed with self-verifying judgments, Oscar apparently cannot discriminate in this way. However, if Oscar lacks this discriminatory ability, then it seems he could be thinking one of two different thoughts, for all he can tell. But normally, Oscar may well know his thoughts even if he cannot discriminate between them, since twin water thoughts are usually irrelevant alternatives that are properly ignored. In fact, adjudicating the relevant alternatives issue may be the central task with slow switch arguments, and it is more appropriate to devote a separate section to it (section 3.2). This controversy is certainly not unique to Burges view. Nevertheless, in Burges case, the discrimination issue is an instance of a larger concern for the view. The difficulty is that an infallible judgment does not obviously count as bona fide knowledge. Besides discriminatory abilities, some kind of epistemic warrant also seems necessaryand it is not obvious how self-verifying judgments are warranted. However, Burge (1996) adds to his account the notion of an epistemic

entitlement; this is understood as what warrants a self-verifying judgment. Burges epistemic entitlements are related to W.s idea (from section 2.3) that a speaker enjoys, somewhat automatically, a warrant to ones self-attributions. Like W., Burge even describes this as the default epistemic status, which need not be earned via some tight, philosophical argument. However, Burge does not merely state that the default status is granted by a convention of the language game. Rather, Burge attempts to explain this entitlement further, as rooted not only in (a) the infallibility of self-verifying judgments, but more importantly in (b) the subjects capacity for critical reasoning. Critical reasoning is reasoning that occurs while aware of ones reasons as reasons. Concordantly, critical reasoning demands that we make judgments about our thoughts, and their worth as reasons. Yet that of course requires knowledge of what those thoughts are (cf. Shoemaker 1988, Moran 2001). Indeed, without knowledge of the thoughts deployed, the attempt to critically evaluate the reasoning seems absurd. For Burge, the entitlement to ones second-order judgments arises in light of this: Since critical reasoning depends on knowing the thoughts deployed, that establishes an epistemic entitlement to our judgments about those thoughts. So the entitlement is not seen as assigned by convention without further comment. Rather the entitlement is established by the need, within critical thinking, for knowledgeable self-attributions. Of special note, Burge holds that the entitlement persists even through Oscars slow switch ordeal. Yet it may not be obvious why or even whether this is so. Moreover, some have raised a kind of Euthyphro dilemma for Burge (Peacocke 1996). Is one entitled to self-attributions because of their role in critical reasoning, as Burge would have it? Or rather, do these attributions have a certain role in critical reasoning because one is entitled to them? Contra Burge, the latter can seem more plausibleand so, the entitlement may need to be explained on independent grounds. For instance, such an explanation might emphasize conceptual redeployment, i.e., that the very same concepts occur in the self-attribution as occurs in the thought itself (Peacocke op. cit., though Burge 1998, p. 359 also utilizes this idea.) Alternatively, such judgments could be seen as warranted in virtue of their perfect reliability, in accord with

a reliabilist epistemology (Gibbons 1996, Brown 2004). Yet another option is to regard such judgments as warranted in virtue of the target first-order states being directly accessible (where this is spelled out in functionalist terms) (Zimmerman 2006; 2008, cf. Shoemaker 1996).

3.1.2 A Problem with Critical Reasoning

But again, Burge wants to uphold the rationality of critical reasoning, by positing an epistemic entitlement to ones self-verifying judgments. However, a further worry is that self-verifying judgments, even if they constitute knowledge, cannot support the rationality of critical thinking. For in brief, they do not enable Oscar to avoid simple logical errors in the manner we would expect of someone rational. (This is what prompts Boghossian 1992a to call self-verifying judgments hollow, p. 15.) If so, then selfverifying judgments do not provide the kind of self-knowledge that most concerns us, when debating the compatibility of EXT and SK. As one instance of the problem, it seems self-verifying judgments do not reveal to Oscar which of his thoughts are flatly inconsistent (Bilgrami 1992; 2003, Boghossian 1992a; 1994). This means critical reasoning might proceed without the person knowing that her premises are impossible, despite whatever self-verifying judgments are available. To illustrate, consider that it is possible for someone to rationally judge: (*) Water H2O. For instance, a scientist in 1750 might have reasonably denied the newly proposed hypothesis that water is H2O. But under EXT, this judgment is not just falseit is inconsistent. For assuming EXT, it seems that the content of the judgment amounts to: Water is non-identical with itself. Yet the person seems guilty of ignorance, not of gross inconsistency. But how can the externalist explain that? It seems the best explanation is that the person was simply ignorant of the content of (*), and so did not knowingly flout classical logic. Yet if so, then SK does not seem true in any meaningful way, despite whatever self-verifying judgments were made.

Instead of inconsistency, the problem can also be put in terms of Oscars inability to judge validity from the armchair. (Boghossian 1992a; 1994).21 Here, the difficulty is that self-verifying judgments do not illuminate whether one thought has the same content as an earlier thought expressed using the same f9rm of words. However, if Oscar is unable to discern same content from the armchair, then he is unable to know from the armchair if his reasoning is valid. For he is unable to discern whether his reasoning equivocates between water thoughts and twin water thoughts. There is a well-known example to illustrate the point (Boghossian op. cits.). Suppose Peter is a fan of opera and especially of Pavarotti, and assume he is slow switched unawares to Twin Earth. Naturally, he continues to pursue his interest in operabut on Twin Earth, he is unwittingly reading interviews of, and buying new albums by, Twin Pavarotti rather than Pavarotti. The problem then arises when memories of Pavarotti are drawn upon in Peters reasoning. For instance, assume he correctly remembers seeing Pavarotti (on Earth) swim in Lake Taupo. Then, after the slow-switch, suppose he uses the memory as the first premise in the following argument: (i) Pavarotti once swam in Lake Taupo. (ii) The singer I heard yesterday is Pavarotti. (iii) Hence, the singer I heard yesterday once swam in Lake Taupo. As things look from Peters armchair, the reasoning seems perfectly valid. Yet in fact, Pavarotti in (i) refers to Pavarotti on Earth, but Pavarotti in (ii) refers to Twin Pavarotti. After all: (i) expresses a memory of Pavarotti, whereas (ii) expresses a judgment that is causally connected to Twin Pavarotti. If this is on track, then the reasoning at (i)-(iii) blatantly equivocates on Pavarotti, even though Peter is unable to see this from the armchair. The issues are somewhat reminiscent of Kripkes (1979) puzzle about belief. Recall that Kripke considers a bilingual, Pierre, who is unaware that Londres co-refers with London (though is otherwise competent with the terms). Due to circumstance, Pierre then ends up asserting both Londres est jolie and London is not

pretty As before, the question is then whether the speaker is guilty of inconsistency. Regardless, Peters case is notably different. Whereas Pierre is ignorant of co-reference, Peter is unaware that his two uses of Pavarotti in (i) and (ii) have different referents. Consequently, Peters case uniquely reveals that, assuming EXT, Oscar might equivocate in his reasoning even though he cannot discern this in the armchair. So even granting self-verifying judgments, EXT may not uphold SK in a sufficiently robust way. It may be controversial, however, whether a more robust armchair self-knowledge should be allowed. An externalist might instead dismiss such knowledge as an illusion of the Cartesian paradigm (Millikan 1984; 1993, Goldberg 1999b; 2007b, Brown 2004). Nonetheless, some externalists seek to mitigate the threat that EXT poses to first-person critical reasoning. The main strategy here is to deny that Peter, as a slow switch victim, refers to different people in (i) versus (ii) (Schiffer 1992; Burge 1998; Goldberg 2007a). The more natural interpretation may have Pavarotti denoting Twin Pavarotti in both instances, in which case, his argument is valid. Of course, this interpretation means that (i) expresses a false memory. But at least there is no unnoticed equivocation within the armchair. Even so, there might be other examples of arguments that merely appear valid, whose invalidity does not turn on the interpretation of the names (Boghossian 1992b). Furthermore, it may be dubious to see Peters memory as shifty between environmentswhere (i) comes to express a false memory about Twin Pavarotti, even though the memory was initially caused by Pavarotti on Earth (in the normal way). However, the possibility of a shifty memory has generated a significant amount of discussion, in part, because it alone cuts against slow switch arguments. Further discussion is thus relegated to a separate section (section 3.3). Interestingly, though the problem with critical reasoning is posed initially vis--vis Burges view, it has started to take a life of its own. One can see the problem as providing a general argument against compatibilism, since the compatibilist is strained to keep separate the logical from the factual errors in Peters reasoning.

In that sort of setting, however, some compatibilists respond that the case misconceives how content is attributed (Stalnaker 2008; also cf. Stalnaker 1990). On this compatibilist view, content is merely something we posit to explain the subjects behavior. (In this, Stalnaker apparently adopts an interpretivist view of content, akin to that of Davidson 1973; 1987.) Moreover, it is held that what adequately explains behavior depends on the attributors aims or purposes. Consequently, in one context (i) might be seen as expressing a false memory about Twin Pavarotti, e.g., if the aim is to explain why Peter talks to Twin Pavarotti as if they were long-time acquaintances. Yet in a different context, (i) may be interpreted as expressing a genuine memory about Pavarotti on Earth. And our compatibilist holds that either interpretation of Peter can be legitimate, for there simply is no attributor-independent fact about what mental contents Peter really has. Of course, many take exception to this interpretivist view of content. Some say it is viciously circular to identify Peters mental content by what someone attributes to him; after all, an attribution of content is itself a contentful mental state (Boghossian 2010; cf. Kriegel 2010). As a second matter, one needs some constraints on what can be attributed to Peter, yet it is unclear what these would be (Boghossian op. cit.).

3.2 Reply 2: Relevant Alternatives

There is a different reply to slow switch arguments which may have seemed obvious from the start. It is that the slow switch thought experiment is a bizarre piece of science fiction, and is simply irrelevant to whether we know our own thoughts from the armchair. After all, unlike Oscar, we are not the victims of covert switches. So how could the experiment bear on our capacity for armchair self-knowledge? The point is often framed in terms of a relevant alternatives epistemology (cf. Goldman 1976; 1986). This holds that in order to know that p, one does not need to rule out every possible scenario where ~p. Rather, it suffices just to rule out the relevant alternatives where ~p. And ordinarily, deviant skeptical possibilities are not among the relevant alternatives that a knower needs to exclude. So for instance, while driving along the countryside, one can ordinarily know if one sees a barneven without excluding the

possibility of a mere barn faade. For barn faades are ordinarily irrelevant. In the same way, slow switch possibilities ordinarily are irrelevant to knowing what content a thought has (Warfield 1992, Falvey & Owens 1994, Gibbons 1996, Brown 2004). Accordingly, it is normally unnecessary to rule out such a possibility in order to know from the armchair ones own thought. But what exactly determines relevance? A popular answer comes from the epistemic contextualists (DeRose 1995; 2009, Lewis 1998; see also the entry on Epistemic Contextualism). Contextualism in the first instance is a view about knowledge, yet it entails that whether an alternative is relevant is determined by the evidential standards in the context. Consider that in order to know whether it is raining, normally one can just take a look out the window. However, when talking with a Cartesian skeptic, that is insufficient. For the skeptic raises the bar on the evidence needed to know by imagining bizarre alternatives that he wants ruled out, e.g., the possibility that you are dreaming. In this vein, some compatibilists regard slow switching as a bizarre skeptical possibility which makes exceedingly high the evidential standards for knowledge (Hohwy 2002; Neta 2003 is also pertinent). Accordingly, if context makes that possibility relevant, one may lose the ability to self-know from the armchair. If switching possibilities are irrelevant, however, contextualism says that even an externalist can know her own thoughts from the armchair. One worry is that contextualist compatibilism renders armchair self-knowledge no more privileged than perceptual knowledge, since both types of knowledge come and go in different contexts. But in reply, the compatibilist can stress that context normally does not require a subject to investigate the environment to know what she thinks. And in that sense, self-knowledge is especially privileged (Hohwy op. cit.). Granted, self-knowledge also looks privileged in being more stable or certain than perceptual knowledge. But for the contextualist, that just reflects that doubts about self-attributions are rarely contextually relevant (ibid.). Interestingly, when first presenting the memory argument, Boghossian (1989) acknowledges the reply from relevant alternatives, but maintains that the slow switch

experiment reveals a tension between EXT and SK anyway. For one can imagine cases where slow switching is a relevant alternative. And in those cases, one could not rule out this possibility just from the armchair. In these instances, then, even the relevant alternatives account denies the externalist armchair self-knowledge. Still, why exactly does this reveal a problem with our self-knowledge? Granted, if slow switching actually occurred, it would be a relevant alternative that could not be excluded from the armchair, and the externalist would lose armchair self-knowledge. But merely to acknowledge a possible scenario of this sort does not indicate that EXT and SK are incompatible (Warfield 1992). It shows merely that if EXT is true, self-knowledge is not necessarily within reach from the armchair. When pressed in this way, some incompatibilists subversively suggest that switches do occur on a regular basis (Ludlow 1995b; Butler 1997). Now in section 1, it was shown that at least one Twin Earth scenario actually occurs: Recall the superficially indiscernible extensions of chicory and endive, which are swapped between British and Standard American English. We can thus imagine an American ex-patriot being unwittingly fooled into denoting chicory when speaking or thinking about endive. Still, this may seem like a rather atypical case. But on second thought, the potential for an undetected switch may be as common as the potential for polysemy in the language (Ludlow op. cit.). Consider that between different philosophical circles, the term pragmatism denotes different yet superficially similar philosophical theses. So thanks to unnoticed switches between subgroups, one might be fooled into saying or believing things about different kinds of pragmatism, due to different uses of the term. Moreover, such variation among linguistic subgroups seems entirely commonplace. (And it is the prevalence of these switches that makes them relevant, even if no actual switch occurs in a given instance.) In reply, a compatibilist can observe that these cases are not cases of slow switching, and the usual view is that contents do not change in a quick switch. (But note that the individuation of some cognitive processes may switch immediately; see Clark & Chalmers 1998). Yet even if slow switches regularly occur, it still does not show that

EXT and SK are incompatible (Warfield 1997). True, if slow switches actually occurred regularly, then EXT and SK may not be true jointly in our world. Nevertheless, they might still be true jointly in some other possible world. So no incompatibility strictly follows. Regardless, it may be troubling enough if an externalist cannot actually have armchair self-knowledge (Ludlow 1997). It is standardly agreed, moreover, that the externalist should concede one type of armchair self-knowledge. Specifically, they should concede armchair self-knowledge that is discriminatory between water contents and twin contents, a.k.a. comparative knowledge of content (Falvey & Owens 1994). But this may not be a huge concession, since it seems one can still know (W) from the armchair, absent any armchair comparisons with twin contents. Besides, there is some independent reason to reject such comparative knowledge anyway (see Owens 1990; 1992). As a further issue, if the compatibilist allows that SK is false when switches are relevant, she may be conceding too much (Goldberg 2006a, Parent MSb). For there is a persistent Cartesian intuition that armchair self-knowledge should be unaffected by skeptical hypotheses about the external world. Following Meditation Two, if I am entirely agnostic about the external world, it still seems I can know what I am currently thinking. However, the slow switch experiment suggests that this Cartesian intuition is mistaken. For a slow switch hypothesis is a skeptical hypothesis about the external world. And if such a hypothesis is relevant, then even a relevant alternatives epistemology demands that we discriminate water thoughts from twin water thoughts. Yet of course, one is unable to do so from the armchair. Apparently, then, some skeptical hypotheses about the external world can undermine armchair knowledge of ones own occurrent thoughts, contra the Cartesian intuition. Thus, even if the compatibilist can secure a somewhat non-discriminating kind of self-knowledge, something important about armchair selfknowledge may be lost. But a relevant alternatives compatibilist may still have hope for rescuing the Cartesian intuition. First, note that in many slow switch arguments, the issue is not whether Oscar knows that he thinks that p from the armchair; rather, it is whether Oscar knows

what he thinks. And unlike ascriptions of knowledge that, ascriptions of knowledge what are appropriate relative to ones goals or purposes in a context (Bor & Lycan 1986, Braun 2006, DeRose 2009, ch. 2 appendix).22 Hence, whether it is apt to say Oscar knows what he thinks will partly depend on contextually salient goals or purposes. Accordingly, if Oscars goal is to discern whether his use of water has a water content or a twin content, then he cannot know what he thinks from the armchair. After all, the armchair provides insufficient resources for such discrimination. However, it may be that for other anti-skeptical purposes, Oscar can indeed know what (Parent, MSb). For instance, suppose the skeptic challenges Oscar on whether he knows the truth of anything with certainty. Then, if Oscar points to his self-verifying judgment (W) (I am thinking forthwith that water is wet), this plausibly counts as meeting the challenge. For it is a case where the truth of his judgment looks certain, even if its content is in question. Before closing this section, it is worth noting that compatibilists sometimes prefer not to insist on the irrelevance of slow switches, but rather to contest whether their relevance undercuts armchair self-knowledge (Falvey & Owens 1994, Butler 1997, McLaughlin & Tye 1998a, Vahid 2003, Brown 2004, Morvarid 2012). Indeed, several different principles could underlie the incompatibilists inference from the relevance of slow switching to a lack of such knowledge. (Note that the inference from (A) to (B) is different than the one presently of concern, since the former does not presuppose the relevance of slow switching.) As a more noteworthy case, the principle here might be some kind of truth tracking condition (cf. Nozick 1981) (Falvey & Owens op. cit.). On this interpretation, the slow switch argument presupposes that the belief I am thinking that water is wet does not count as knowledge, because the subject S fails to track the truth in the following sense: (TC) Ss justification for the belief that p is such that, if some relevant alternative were true instead, S would still believe that p. Roughly, S fails to know according to (TC), since Ss justification would not divert her from the self-attribution in a relevant alternative where the self-attribution is false. However, if this is the underlying principle behind slow switch arguments, it seems they

can be resisted (Falvey & Owens, op. cit.). For it is plausible that we do not satisfy (TC), when it comes to self-verifying judgments (see section 3.1). If we consider a counterfactual where I have twin water thoughts in lieu of water thoughts, I cannot believe I have water thoughts. After all, any self-attribution expressed as I am thinking that water is wet would inevitably attribute a twin water thought instead. So my self-attribution tracks the truth perfectly in the various counterfactual circumstances.

3.3 Reply 3: Externalism about Memory

Let us now focus our attention on the second version of the slow switch argument, a.k.a. the memory argument. The argument is that, if t2 is a time after a slow switch, and t1 is a time before, then: (1) If Oscar forgets nothing, then what Oscar knows at t1, Oscar knows at t2. (2) Oscar forgot nothing. (3) Oscar does not know at t2 that he thinks p. (4) So, Oscar does not know at t1 that he thinks p. [from (1)-(3)] As one might expect, each of the premises have been challenged by various writers. As concerns (1), some reject the suggestion that, even if p was known at t1, remembering p does not imply knowing it at t2 (Bernecker 2010, ch. 3). But even if remembering means knowing, there are other ways Oscar can lose knowledge besides forgetting (Brueckner 1997a; Burge 1998, n. 18). For instance, suppose Oscar knows he driving through a countryside with at least one barn, but then some defeating condition is introduced (e.g., he enters Barn Faade County). Then, he may no longer know at t2 that there is a barn in his environs, even if he truly believes it. Thats because even though nothing has been forgotten, a defeating condition exists at t2 that was absent at t1. An incompatibilist might try to stipulate that Oscar meets all the conditions needed to know that p on the basis of memory. However, the compatibilist may reply that this stipulation is inconsistent with the occurrence of a slow switch (Brueckner, op. cit.). For a slow switch just is a defeating condition, akin to entering Barn Faade County. So the incompatibilists argument does not get started.

Besides denying (1) for this reason, a compatibilist can attack the portrayal of memory in premises (1) and (2). Here, an externalist might claim that Oscars memory content is partly determined not by the Earthly environment in which the memory was formed. Rather, it is conditioned by the environment in which recall occurs, i.e., on Twin Earth (Ludlow 1995a, 1996; 1999; Gibbons 1996; Tye 1998; Bernecker 1998). This means that, even if knowledge of a water thought was initially stored in memory, what is recalled concerns a twin water thought. If so, then a slow switch results in a kind of memory failure, since the knowledge initially stored in memory is not what is recalled. (N.B., memories of second-order thoughts are the most dialectically relevant to the memory argument, but the literature often uses first-order memories as examples, cf. Kraay 2002.) This view of memory as shifty between different environments may well be a natural consequence of EXT. For one can just as easily consider a Putnam-style thought experiment concerning Oscar and Twin Oscars memories (Ludlow, op. cits.). Moreover, in the slow switch experiment, the presumption is that Oscars water thoughts generally change over to twin water thoughtsand that includes whatever (first- or second-order) thoughts are stored in memory. Now it may be strange to see Oscars memory in this way, and we shall attend to objections shortly. But it is worth observing that this externalist view of memory allows one to resist the argument at (1)(4). A compatibilist might first grant that Oscar does not forget strictly speakingafter all, we can suppose no neurological impairment occurs in Oscar. Yet she can add that Oscar loses some memory content regardless, thanks to the slow switch. So on this line, Oscar does not truly forget yet has still lost knowledge by a different route; premise (1) of the memory argument is thus false. (Note: The shifty view of memory has waned in recent years; Bernecker 2004; 2010 relinquishes it in favor of something like Burges 1998 view; see below. Ludlow 2004 exchanges it for a view where a memory is a temporally extended object, one which has stages that hosts different contents at different times. But see Burge 1998 n. 2 for some remarks against such a view.) The externalist view of memory can come as a shock; however, it might also enjoy some intuitive support (Tye 1998). For instance, suppose after the switch that Oscar judges:

(W) Water is the only thing I now drink; however, many years ago, I drank water fortified by gin. Since (W) is judged after the slow switch, the initial use of water refers to XYZ. But does the second use of water refer to XYZ? It seems so, since (W) is making a comparison of how Oscars imbibes a liquid now versus in the past. Such a comparison, of course, requires the liquid named in (W) to be constant. And since the initial use of water denotes XYZ, then the second use of water must also denote XYZ. The upshot is that after the switch, the second clause in (W) expresses a memory that has shifted from water content to a twin water content, as predicted by the compatibilist. Still, the shifty view of memory is fairly controversial. Consider that if Oscars memory content is calibrated to Twin Earth, so to speak, then some thoughts stored in memory will shift from being true to being false (Hofmann 1995, Brueckner 1997a, Nagasawa 2000). Suppose Oscar on Earth expresses a veridical memory when he asserts: (W) As a child, I thought that water was positively scrumptious. However, after the slow switch, (W) self-attributes a twin water thought in childhood and this (let us suppose) is false. So what was a genuine memory vis--vis Earth becomes displaced by a false memory. Yet the objection apparently begs the question of how memory is supposed to function (Ludlow 1996). For the issue is precisely whether memory is supposed to preserve past contents across different environments. The counter-suggestion instead is that memory offers information about past events, in terms pertinent to the present environment (Ludlow 1996; 1999, Bernecker 1998). Ludlow (1999) provides an illustration: If at t1 I believed it was possible to drown in water, memory will deliver a t2 belief that it is possible to drown in twaterand good thing, too! Twater is no less dangerous than water (p. 167). But as a second worry, if Oscars memory contents shift, has he really forgotten nothing? A case can be made that the memory shifts indeed constitute forgetting (Brueckner

1997a). For on this view, even though memory offers up a similar substitute content, it seems clear that Oscar fails in his attempt to recall something about water. Yet a failed attempt at recall just means that Oscar forgot. If this is correct, then it is premise (2) rather than (1) which is the culprit in the memory argument. (Still, there may remain a sense in which Oscar does not forget; Brueckner op. cit., n. 21; see also Kraay 2002). Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether EXT entails the shifty theory of memory in the first place. Indeed, Burge (1979, p. 92, passim) had conceded that the Twin Earth experiments do not show that all mental contents are partly determined by the environment (though they suggest that that is often so). The contents of memory thus might stand as an exception. And indeed, Burge (1993; 1998) endorses the view that memory should preserve past thought contents. In a slow switch case, specifically, Burge holds that Oscars properly functioning memory preserves an Earthian thought content, so that the very same content is available later for recollection. Consequently, Burge rejects premise (3) of the memory argument: If Oscar truly forgot nothing, then preservative memory allows him to know at t2 what he knew at t1. (Per Falvey & Owens 1994,) Oscars memory may not provide comparative knowledge of content, i.e., knowledge that enables armchair discriminations between water and twin water contents. But his memory could preserve knowledge of his thought at t1meaning that (3) is false. (The incompatibilist might rejoin that (3) is stipulative in the thought experiment; but in that case, Burge will side with Brueckner 1997a in rejecting (2).) Whether one accepts the shifty view of memory or not, the debate here is important to opening up different interpretations of the slow switch thought experiment. The default stance has been that the slow switch wholly replaces Oscars water concept with a twin water concept (see, e.g., Ludlow 1996, Brueckner 1997). Following Bernecker 2010, call this the conceptual replacement interpretation. However, Burges conception of preservative memory highlights that Oscar could conceivably retain the water concept while acquiring an additional concept during the slow switch (even if he cannot discriminate between the two concepts). Call this latter interpretation the conceptual addition interpretation (favored by Burge 1998, Boghossian 1989, Gibbons 1996).

Consequently, after the switch, water in Oscars mouth seems ambiguous between the two concepts: On some occasions it expresses the water concept (e.g. when Oscar expresses childhood memories), and on other occasions it expresses the twin water concept (e.g., when he asks his waiter on Twin Earth for a glass of water.). Yet on the conceptual addition interpretation, it is not entirely obvious whether the added concept is the twin water concept, specifically. One might instead say that the additional concept is disjunctive, in denoting water or twin water. Relatedly, an externalist might even suggest that Oscar expresses more than one concept with water, or possibly that it is indeterminate which concept it expresses. (See Bernecker 2010, ch. 6, for an overview of such options.) How should we decide among the various interpretations? Surprisingly, only one externalist has pursued this question at any length, namely, Heal (1998) (but see also Burge 1998, n. 13). However, Heals aim is not so much to settle the question, as to illustrate that the issue is really much more complex than has been admitted. Heal first allows that (W) can be construed in the way suggested earlier, as confirming the shifty memory view. The basis for this interpretation was the following. (1a) The first occurrence of water has a twin water content (since it is used in expressing a thought about the stuff presently before Oscar). (2a) The second occurrence of water expresses the same content as the first. (3a) So, the second occurrence of water has a twin water content. But Heal observes one might be just as inclined to reason thus (p. 101): (1b) The second occurrence of water has a water content (since it helps to express a memory about the stuff on Earth). (2b) The first occurrence of water has the same content as the second. (3b) So, the first occurrence of water has a water content. And on its face, it is unclear why one argument takes priority over the other. Indeed, Heal suggests the latter may sometimes be a more appropriate argument than the former,

depending on ones purposes (pp. 101-102). This is one complexity that seems to have been underappreciated. Secondly, Heal notes that Oscars transition from English to Twin English is not cleancut. She writes: in the early two or three days of a switch the victim, asked to indicate what he meant by water; would specify a mixed bag by offering phrases such as what I had a bath in last week, what is in this glass right now, what, in its frozen form, I skated on last winter, what comes out of that tap over there, etc. (p. 107) And this raises the question Under what conditions, then, is a switch complete? (ibid.). (The Triplet Earth and triwater example on p. 99-100 is relevant here as well.) Nevertheless, Heal offers some guidance on how an externalist should untangle these knots. Most basically, such matters should be decided by ones externalist metaphysics of meaning (of the sorts noted in section 1).23 On Putnams (1975) externalist semantics, it is important here that the environmental objects referred to serve also as standard-setters by resemblance to whichother items deserve the same label (Heal 1998, p. 103). (Though Putnam himself speaks of stereotypes rather than standard-setters.) Concordantly, our practice of using natural kind terms can exist and have the features it does only because we have memories of and generally reliable abilities to re-identify particular specimens (p. 104). Against this background, Heal concludes that [t]he slow switching claim then amounts to this: after a while in the new environment a new set of (remembered and identifiable) specimens from the new environment will come to play the standard-setting role (ibid.). So roughly, the establishment of stereotypes and the acquisition of re-identification abilities are the crucial matters, for the externalist, for determining which concepts figure into which of Oscars thoughts, and when. Intriguing as all this is, memory may ultimately be a red herring to slow switch arguments. Suppositions about memory can seem inessential to the so called memory argument (Goldberg 1997; 1999a; 2000a). For the key issue illustrated by the slow switch experiment is that our own self-attributions can be open to more than one interpretation. Thus, if post-switch Oscar claims I am thinking that water is scrumptious, this could conceivably express a second order belief about either a water

thought or a twin water thought. Yet it is this underdetermination in its interpretation which Oscar cannot resolve from the armchair. So already there is a problem with armchair knowledge, absent any premises about memory. When spelled out, this memory free slow switch argument depends on the following principle of knowing identification: (PKI) If a subject S recognizes that there is more than one relevant interpretation of her assertions/beliefsand S has nothing to decide between themthen S lacks knowledge of the content of her assertion/belief. However, one might object that Oscar is missing only comparative knowledge of content when the antecedent of (PKI) (non-vacuously) applies. That is, in such a condition, Oscar lacks only self-knowledge that comes with armchair discriminations between a content and a twin content (Brueckner 1999; cf. Falvey & Owens 1994). But importantly, (PKI) only addresses cases where (a) there is more than one relevant interpretation, and (b) the subject recognizes that (Goldberg 1999a). Accordingly, one difference with the memory free argument is that in the thought experiment, we assume that Oscar is informed of the slow switches at some later time t3 (whence both (a) and (b) are satisfied). Conversely, if slow switch possibilities are irrelevant or go unrecognized, the memory free slow switch argument does not tell against Oscars ability to self-know from the armchair. And so the argument already allows for the possibility of non-discriminating knowledge of content, thus quelling the objection. (But for a rebuttal, see Brueckner 2000.) Nevertheless, since it has limited applicability, the memory free slow switch argument does not show that EXT and SK are incompatible, strictly speaking (Goldberg op. cit., p. 217; Goldberg 2000a). But it still reveals that EXT entails that SK is false when certain skeptical possibilities are entertained (contrary to, e.g., the view in Meditation Two).

3.4 Reply 4: The Argument is Self-Undermining

As should be clear, slow switch arguments can be seen as skeptical arguments, where the externalist is asked to rule out deviant thought contents from the armchair. Moreover,

since the skeptic thinks these possibilities cannot be so excluded, the skeptical lesson is that the externalist lacks armchair self-knowledge. But one sort of reply here is that such skepticism is self-undermining (Ebbs 1996; 2001; 2005; Brueckner & Ebbs, 2012, ch. 12). The contention is that, assuming EXT, the skeptic cannot both deny SK and be justified in accepting the premises of his own argument. If this line is correct, then skeptical slow switch arguments end up being incoherent. Observe that, besides EXT, skeptical slow switch arguments tacitly or explicitly presuppose the following two claims: (I) If I am on Twin Earth, then my saying water is scrumptious expresses the thought that twin water is scrumptious. (II) If I am on Earth, then my saying water is scrumptious expresses the thought that water is scrumptious. Such arguments also take it that (assuming Twin Earth possibilities are relevant alternatives): (III) One cannot know from the armchair which of the two thoughts is expressed by water is scrumptious. The problem, however, is that (III) applies to water is scrumptious whenever I say it. Therefore, it applies to water is scrumptious as it occurs in the consequent of (II). So if (III) is accepted, it follows that I do not know from the armchair what thought is expressed by the consequent of (II), hence, by (II) itself. Yet if I do not know what thought is expressed by (II), I can hardly be justified in accepting that thought (Ebbs, op. cits.). Hence, I cannot simultaneously hold (III) and be justified in accepting (II). (A similar charge is made about the justification for (I), with similar objections and replies to think about. But for brevitys sake, we shall only consider (II).) Two objections might be made to this self-undermining charge. The first is that, though the exact content of (II) may be unknown from the armchair, one can still be justified in accepting (II) (Brueckner 1997b). For it seems that (II) can be shown true, no matter

whether one speaks English or Twin English. After all, regardless of what water denotes, it will be true to assert water is scrumptious expresses the thought that water is scrumptious. So it seems (II) must be true; hence, one is justified in accepting it. In reply, however, one can imagine weird worlds where (II) ends up false (Ebbs 2001). I might consider a world much like this one, except Earth denotes not the planet that I am currently on, but rather denotes Twin Earth. In that case, (II) says that if I am on Twin Earth, then asserting water is scrumptious expresses the thought that water (i.e. H2O) is scrumptious. Yet if so, then (II) is false under those circumstances. So one cannot assume that (II) is true, no matter how the world turns out, contra the objection. The second objection against the self-undermining charge takes the form of a dilemma. Observe that water is scrumptious either expresses the content that I believe it expresses, or it does not. If it does, then (II) is trueand so, in conjunction with (I) and (III), the slow switch argument remains standing (Brueckner 2003). But suppose on the other hand that water is scrumptious does not express the content I judge that it has. Then, since my second-order judgment is false, I obviously do not know what its content is. So in that case, SK is false. Hence, on either horn of the dilemma, the skeptical conclusion remains viable (ibid.). Yet even if this is right, the slow switch argument-schema at (I)-(III) cannot justifiably be seen as a sound argument (Ebbs 2005). After all, in the present case, (II) is no longer categorically assumed to be true. Regardless, the point stands that not all slow switch arguments utilizing (III) have been shown incoherent (Brueckner 2007). Specifically, the dilemma argument above purports to be a perfectly coherent argument for skepticism about SK. However, perhaps (III) is precisely where the problem lies. It may seem that (III) is entirely justified, but why is that exactly? Presumably, it is because we are (putatively) justified in thinking that water is scrumptious can express a different thought than the one it actually does. But this presupposes (II) (Brueckner & Ebbs, 2012, ch. 12). Yet at this stage, it was agreed that (II) might be false due to inhabiting a weird world. So the

justification for (III) presupposes (II), even though (II) was already conceded. So the justification for (III) must also go (Brueckner & Ebbs, op. cit. For a reply, see Brueckner & Ebbs, 2012, ch. 13).

3.5 Reply 5: Anti-Recognitionalism

A more programmatic critique of slow switch arguments holds that they mistakenly assimilate armchair self-knowledge to perceptual knowledge. In particular, the arguments falsely assume that for Oscar to know what he is thinking, he must recognize what he is thinking on the basis of some inward observation. Slow switch arguments thus exploit the fact that what would be observed is compatible with more than one thought content. However, for one kind of compatibilist, such recognitional models of self-knowledge are largely in error. For self-knowledge is unlike perceptual knowledge in that it is normally not the product of any kind of recognition. (Some even take slow switch arguments to evidence that armchair self-knowledge is not recognitional, e.g., Moran 2001, p. 15.) This anti-recognitionalist compatibilism can be developed in a number of ways. We have already seen some precedent in Burges view about self-verifying judgments (section 3.1), since these judgments do not represent a cognitive achievement (in the words of Boghossian 1989). After all, they are automatically self-verifying, whether the subject invests any epistemic effort in them or not. Further, Ws notion of default entitlement (from section 2.3) results in an anti-recognitionalist view. On that account, a subject does not need a tight philosophical argument to be entitled to her self-attributions; such entitlement is instead granted automatically (unless there is special reason to withhold it). Burge admits, however, that self-verifying judgments are atypical as far as selfknowledge goes. Moreover, the idea that armchair self-knowledge largely results from introspection or inner recognition is fairly compelling. So why be so suspicious of the recognitional model? To be clear, an anti-recognitionalist need not deny altogether the existence of introspection. However, it is held that inner recognition normally does not

explain armchair self-knowledge in a satisfactory way. There are no less than seven arguments in the literature for this, which shall be reviewed below. But in the spirit of charity, let us note first that the recognitional model does not require mind-body dualism, despite its association with Descartes. Nor does it assume that mental states are essentially private objects. For there is a materialist introspectionist view which explains armchair self-knowledge by a functionally realized internal scanning of the brain (Armstrong 1968, ch. 15, Lycan 1996). Moreover, the process is seen as reliable (albeit fallible), and thus the resulting judgments might qualify as knowledge, per a reliabilist epistemology (cf. Goldman 1986). The materialist introspectionist, moreover, denies that mental states are essentially private, for others can in principle monitor these states by, say, an artificial scanner. But this leads to the first worry about introspectionism. No matter how reliable the artificial scanner is, if the subject repeatedly disagrees with its verdict that (e.g.) she feels pain, we would sooner question the artificial scanner than the subject (Bar-On 2004, pp. 100-101). This suggests that the subjects authority on her own mental states is not wholly explicable by reliable scanning. Secondly, on the introspectionist picture, self-attributions are vulnerable to brute error, i.e., error based on illusions of what the subject is thinking or feeling (Bar-On, op. cit.; cf. also Burge 1988). But if the subject asserts I am in pain or occurrently judges Id like some water, it is hard to see how there is room for illusion. Note here that, even if Oscar on Earth cannot discriminate between water and twin water, his self-attribution Id like some water still seems secure in attributing a desire for water (Bar-On 2006, p. 432). (Oscar might be fooled into accepting twin water instead, but he was still correct in self-attributing a desire for water.) Thirdly, the introspectionist picture allows the possibility of global systematic failure, that is, the possibility of a subject whose is largely self-blind, whose inner scanner is broken whereby she is unreliable about her own mental states. But such a thing can

seem incoherent. Indeed, some think that this would preclude seeing the person as having intentional states at all (Shoemaker 1996; Wright 1998; Bar-On 2004). As a fourth objection, the recognitional model misportrays beliefs as recognizable by their phenomenology. Yet arguably, there is no distinctive phenomenology to the belief that (say) Wagner died happy (Moran 2001, ch. 1). A related objection is that the recognitional model is untrue to the actual phenomenology of self-knowing (Wright 1989, p. 631). If you are ever unlucky enough to avow (sincerely) Im in serious pain!, it would not seem preceded by an inner scanning. The connection between pain and knowing the pain seems more immediate than that. Sixth, the introspective model is dubious in positing inner objects that are to be inspected by the minds eye (Davidson 1987, Wright 1998, Moran 2001, ch. 1). Such talk seems to be metaphor if not sheer mythology (Wright op. cit., p. 634). But for Wrights Wittgenstein, the most important argument against the recognitional model is the private language argument. Without going into detail, W. holds that there cannot be standards for correctness in self-attributing mental states if based only on a private recognition (Wright 1989; 1998; and the related chs. of Wright 2001. But see McDowell 1991; 1998 for criticism. See also Glock & Preston 1995 on how Wittgensteins externalism differs importantly from Putnam-Burge externalism.) Yet if the recognitional model is in error, what should replace it? Peacocke (1998, p. 82) gives one anti-recognitional account explicitly aimed at diffusing slow switch worries. The claim is that what makes reasonable a self-attribution is not that one has recognized the content by discriminating it from twin contents. Rather, it is the experiential content itself which makes the attribution reasonable. Thus, the content of the experience is not only the target of the self-attribution, the very thing that acts as a reason for selfattribution, in a way that might qualify it as knowledge. As a different positive view, some say that to assume a speaker is using language to express her thoughts, ask questions, etc., just is to assume that the speaker has minimal knowledge of the thoughts she expresses (Ebbs 2012; see also Ebbs 1996). Such

minimal self-knowledge consists in a basic kind of competence in using the language, and can be characterized by at least the following three conditions. If a speaker has minimal knowledge of a linguistic expression e, then: (c1) There are some beliefs the speaker expresses by using e. (c2) The speaker need not have wholly accurate beliefs about what content is expressed by e. (Cf. Burges 1979 arthritis example.) (c3) The speaker knows, without any special empirical investigation on the matter, what content is expressed by e. (That is so, even though the acquisition of e requires experiential or testimonial knowledge.) There is probably more to say on what minimal knowledge of e consists in, but (c1)(c3) at least give some idea of such knowledge. And of course, an overt recognition of what e expresses is not necessary for this brand of self-knowing. As for Wrights Wittgenstein, one might expect an emotivist or expressivist view of selfknowledge, where a self-attribution is the (non-truth-evaluable) venting of an emotion. ([T]he verbal expression of pain replaces crying, it does not describe it, PI 244.) However, ignoring the theoretical problems with this, the textual evidence for the view in Wittgenstein is rather scant (Wright 1998, p. 38). Accordingly, W. instead endorses a kind of primitivism about armchair self-knowledge. No explanation is offered for why self-attributions are given a default warrant; in fact, the mistake may be in thinking there is an explanation to be had (ibid.). (This primitivism is believed to exemplify the antitheoretical stance that Wittgenstein was known for.) Expressivism per se currently has few adherents, yet there is a neo-expressivist view that is gaining prominence (Bar-On & Long 2001, Finkelstein 2003, Bar-On 2004; 2006; 2011; 2012). Unlike traditional expressivism, neo-expressivism holds that selfattributions are truth-evaluable. But the view has an expressivist element in that the strong epistemic status of a self-attribution is due to its being expressive of the mental state. (For further introduction to neo-expressivism, see the entry on Self-Knowledge.)

Other anti-recognitionalists make use of agency theoretic ideas in explaining selfknowledge (Moran 2001, Heal 2002, Bilgrami 2006, OBrien 2007, Coliva 2009). One notion that is prominently featured is that of commitment. The idea is that when I avow I believe water is the most scrumptious beverage ever, I thereby commit myself to the first-order belief. In so committing, my status as a rational agent is then subject to assessment, by whether I behave in accord with the first order belief. In a related vein, knowledge of ones own beliefs is seen as a requirement on ones being epistemically responsible for those beliefs (Again, see the entry on Self-Knowledge for more.) The anti-recognitionalists positive accounts are not without difficulties however. For instance, the agency theoretic accounts may explain only why we treat people as knowing their own thoughts, rather than vindicating that people do achieve such knowledge (McGeer 1996, cf. also Fricker 1998). But in fact, this may be for the best, since experimental psychology indicates that self-knowledge is often a spurious phenomenon (McGeer, op. cit.; see also section 2.4). Another objection is that it is a misnomer to call self-attributions knowledge if there is no cognitive achievement in acquiring it (Bar-On 2004; 2006). For instance, if selfattributions are given a kind of default security, as W. suggests, then the knowledge which results, if any, is a very thin, deflationary sort of knowledge. In reply, however, an anti-recognitionalist might co-opt Peacockes (1998) suggestion that the mental state acts as the reason or the warrant for a self-attribution (Bar-On, op. cit.) Granted, such warrant does not reflect some kind of recognition on the subjects part. But possessing a reason or rationalization for a self-attribution is not cognitively negligible. So in that sense, though self-knowledge remains anti-recognitional, it can still stand as a kind of cognitive achievement (ibid.). So self-knowledge need not be seen in a deflationary way.

4. Other Issues with Externalist Self-Knowledge

There are a surprising number of other issues regarding externalism and knowledge of ones own mind. Some of these consist in lesser-known incompatibilist arguments. For instance, there is a kind of inverted memory argument suggesting that, if Burges selfverifying judgments count as bona fide self-knowledge, then ones memory would be infallible in ways that it is obviously not (Goldberg 2000). As a separate matter, it is also sometimes argued that EXT and SK preclude the standard analysis of epistemic possibility. (Ebbs 2003; 2011. But see McLaughlin 2004.) Questions about compatibility have been extended to more than just knowledge of ones own mental contents. There is a case to be made, for instance, that EXT precludes armchair knowledge of ones attitudes toward those contents (Bernecker 1996, Gibbons 2001). Thus, even if it is known that you are currently thinking that water is scrumptious, EXT may preclude armchair knowledge that you believe that thought, since what counts as belief might vary according to ones linguistic community. In addition, new issues have arisen in light of externalism about qualia (as defended by Dretske 1995, Lycan 1987; 1996; 2001). Briefly, if a quale is partly individuated by the subjects environment, then it seems one could not know that one had a quale of fire engine red unless one antecedently knew the actual color of fire engines. But since the latter is not knowable from the armchair, then it seems neither is the former (Levine 2003, Ellis 2007). Another set of issues concerns the metaphysics of mind. Some have wondered if EXT and SK absurdly allow armchair knowledge of Fodors (1975) Language of Thought Hypothesis (Davies 1998). Others have suggested that the Language of Thought Hypothesis falsifies SK, assuming EXT (Boghossian 1989, p. 6, Bonjour 1991). Finally, some writers have worried that if one can know what one thinks, then one can know that one thinks. If so, then the ability to armchair know ones own thoughts would too easily refute eliminativism about the mental (Dretske 2003a; 2003b; 2004, Bernecker 1998; 2004b; see also Jacob 2004).

Finally, there is a burgeoning literature on whether EXT is compatible with epistemic internalism, the view that knowledge supervenes on whats in the head (Pritchard & Kallestrup 2004, Gerken 2008; also cf. Chase 2001, Brueckner 2002. Goldberg 2007a is relevant as well). Many of the issues here turn on what kind of self-knowledge is allowed by EXT, and in particular, whether such knowledge is discriminating enough for justificatory purposes.

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_____, 2000a, Cogency and Question-Begging: Some Reflections on McKinseys Paradox and Putnams Proof, in Skepticism, E. Sosa & E. Villanueva (eds.), pp. 140-163.

_____, 2000b, Replies, in Skepticism, E. Sosa & E. Villanueva (eds.), pp. 201219.

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_____, 2011, McKinsey One More Time, in Self-Knowledge, A. Hatzimoysis (ed.), pp. 80-104.Wright, C., B. Smith & C. Macdonald (eds.), 1998, Knowing Our Own Minds, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Collections Many works cited and further readings are found in the anthologies above: Boghossian & Peacocke (2000), Frapolli & Romero (2003), Gertler (2003), Goldberg (2007c), Hatzimoysis (2011), Ludlow & Martin (1998), Nuccetelli (2003), Schantz (2004), Villanueva (1992; 1998), and Wright et al., (1998).

Other relevant collections include:

Barber, A. (ed.), 2003, Epistemology of Language, New York: Oxford University Press.

Boghossian, P., 2008, Content and Justification: Philosophical Papers, New York Oxford University Press.

Brown, J. & M. Gerken, 2012, New Essays on Knowledge Ascriptions, New York: Oxford University Press.

Burge, T., 2006, Foundations of Mind: Philosophical Essays Vol. 2, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Brueckner, A., 2010, Essays on Skepticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cassam, Q. (ed.), 1994, Self-Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coliva, A. (ed.), 2012, The Self and Self-Knowledge, New York: Oxford University Press.

_____, (ed.), 2012, Mind, Meaning, and Knowledge: Themes on the Philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford University Press.

Davidson, D., 2002, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, New York: Oxford University Press.

Hahn, M. & B. Ramberg (eds.), 2004, Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Marvan, T. (ed.), 2006, What Determines Content? The Internalism/Externalism Dispute, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.

Pessin, A. & S. Goldberg (eds.), 1996, The Twin Earth Chronicles, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Smithies, D. & D. Stoljar (eds.), 2012, Introspection and Consciousness, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Notes to Externalism and Self-Knowledge

1. There is an unfortunate polysemy in the term thought. Often, a thought is a contentful mental representation that is expressible by a declarative sentence. On other occasions, a thought is merely the content per se of such a mental representation. Still other times, a thought is only the vehicle for a content (as with the use of thoughts that this note attaches to). Consequently, thought in the first sense denotes a composite of a content and a vehicle. In the literature context normally makes clear which sense of thought is intended on an occasion of use, and it is assumed that this holds for the present discussion as well 2. We shall see that this formulation of EXT is too weak (in section 2.1), though it is a standard formulation and suffices for present purposes.

3. Knowing from the armchair is knowing by means other than the five senses. Knowing pure mathematics and knowing mental states via introspection are examples. N.B., Macdonald (1995) helpfully separates two questions regarding SK: (q1) How is armchair knowledge of content possible, given EXT, and (q2) How is it that my knowledge of content is authoritative, given that it is gained from the armchair? This entry is focused on (q1), though sometimes it is assumed by writers that a satisfactory answer to (q1) must answer (q2) along the way. 4. This particular incompatibilist line is usually rejected, since it is agreed that the first premise is dubious; see Burge 1988, p. 651, 654-655; Boghossian 1989, p. 12. One can know what x is without knowing the enabling conditions that make such knowledge possible. Still, this initial argument captures what is most basically at issue, especially in slow switch arguments (section 3). 5. A concept here is understood to be a mental particular that has a content, which can be joined in accord with compositional rules to form thoughts. N.B., the discussion varies in speaking sometimes of the content of concepts, and other times of the content of thoughts. But EXT as formulated concerns the content of both concepts and thoughts, and the occasional variation in focus is assumed to be harmless. 6. Twin water is stipulated be the English translation of the Twin English term water. But XYZ is not a strict translation of the Twin English term water (just in the way that H2O is not a strict synonym for water in English). Consequently, since thought attributions are standardly intensional, the sentence I am thinking that water is wet in Twin English ascribes the thought that I am thinking that twin water is wet. But it does not ipso facto ascribe the thought I am thinking that XYZ is wet. 7. The Frege-Carnap thesis may be rejected by some, but it is this sort of idea which underlies many of the thought-experiments. (Putnam 1975 is especially clear about this.) 8. In fact, water and other natural kinds can be problematic in illustrating the externalists point; see Dupr (1981). But water will feature prominently here, since this is the example most used in the literature.

9. Since Oscar and his twin are ignorant of chemistry, it should be clear that EXT applies to the contents of Oscars de dicto or opaquely ascribed thoughts (in addition to de re or transparently ascribed thoughts). Consider: Both Oscar and his twin assert water is scrumptiousbut given their ignorance, Oscar would not assert H2O is scrumptious nor would his twin assert XYZ is scrumptious. Even so, the de dicto belief expressed by water is scrumptious differs between the twins, since there are different thought contents. Given only that Oscar refers to H2O and his twin refers to XYZ (albeit not under those descriptions), the Frege-Carnap view already implies that the twins must have different contents. 10. Ludlow himself uses arugula in the example; however, I am told it is actually endive that swaps extensions with chicory between the dialects. 11. The term water content refers to the content of the water concept, where the water concept is the concept that is expressed in English by water. (And in line with note 6, the water concept is assumed to be different from the H2O concept.) 12. Notably, McKinsey (2002; 2003; 2007) formulates another version of the reductio which avoids the apriority of (1). Instead, McKinsey invokes the closure of apriority; see section 2.3 for more. 13. The community disjunct from (4) is omitted for simplicity. Besides, EXT may require waters existence anyway in order for the community to obtain the water concept (Wright 2000, n. 4). 14. Boghossian first uses Dry Earth to show the thought-experiments do not need the empirical premise that water names a natural kind. Yet though this would support apriority, Dry Earth also threatens the truth of (1). Thus Boghossian also uses Dry Earth to oppose empty-concept externalism. 15. Segal formulates the Externalists dilemma slightly differently on p. 32ff : Either deny that unicorn expresses a concept, or allow it expresses a descriptive concept. (Boghossian 1997 notes the no concept option as well.) Yet as Sawyer 2003 shows,

those choices are not exhaustive. In contrast, the above formulation indeed presents exhaustive options. 16. Wright offers a disjunctive template to describe when transmission failure generally occurs; similarly, Davies provides us two limitation principles. Besides the reductio, these are also applied to Moorean anti-skeptical arguments, Putnams brains-in-vats argument, and others. Wrights template in particular has generated an interesting literature, e.g., McLaughlin (2003), Brown (2004), Brueckner (2006). (See also Kallestrup 2011 for some overview of the issues.) However, this material is omitted, given that our interest in transmission is not so general; it concerns only the reductio. 17. As with (TW), an approximation here will do for introductory purposes. But n.b., Davies sometimes implies that the antecedent would have the *premises actually having a warrant, besides being granted one. Relatedly, as we will see, Wright would have the consequent saying that (3) is warranted, not just that it is assumed. Wrights modification makes for a notable difference; see the final paragraph of this section. But otherwise, the two authors levy the presupposition-charge in roughly in the same way. 18. Hawthorne himself illustrates the point in relation to mathematical concepts, but this has been changed to sofas to make apparent the relevance of his point. 19. It is important that Sawyer bases her externalism in a causal theory of contentand as we saw at the start of section 2, such an externalism would seem to rob (1) of an apriori status. So notably, Sawyers view that warrant can transmit to (3) in the deduction may not even concern a purely apriori warrant. 20. The self-referential element seems absent from Davidson (1987; 1988) and Heil (1988); they seem to describe how a second order judgment tracks the first order thought in more causal terms. (It thus may be unfair to call Heil and Davidson infallibilists about second-order judgments, since the causal connections might only hold ceteris paribus.) 21. Though we have discussed occurrent second-order judgments mainly via Burges (1988) view, Boghossians (1992a) and (1994) are addressed to Heil (1988) and to

Davidson (1987; 1988), respectively. Boghossians official reply to Burge consists in the memory argument, noted early in section 3. 22. Note that unlike the others, Braun thinks the purpose-relativity in ascribing S knows what x is lies not in the semantics of the ascription, but rather in its pragmatics. The idea is that goals or purposes do not affect the truth conditions of S knows what x is, but rather affects under what conditions it is felicitous to assert such a sentence, vis--vis Gricean norms of conversation. 23. Following Kaplan, it is becoming increasingly popular to call ones metaphysics of meaning a metasemantics, but this can be misleading. (It is not as if it is the metatheory for a formal semantics, which is of interest in its own right. On that topic, the author warmly recommends his dissertation.)

Copyright 2012 by T. Parent <parentt@vt.edu>